Secondhand Spoke

"Secondhand Spoke" is the fifteenth episode of the twelfth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the 225th episode overall. It aired on Fox in the United States on March 30, 2014, and is written by Dave Ihlenfeld and David Wright and directed by Julius Wu.^[1] In the episode, Peter is asked to be the face of an anti-smoking campaign just as he has taken up the habit of smoking cigarettes, while Stewie helps Chris face bullies at school.

Plot

Brian gives Chris a ride to school, where he is confronted by four bullies. Seeing this, Stewie feels sorry for him and later offers to help him. He goes to school with Chris the next day and preps him to insult the bullies back; Chris flubs it, so Stewie hides in Chris' backpack to coach him, which is successful. The bullies move on, targeting Neil Goldman; Chris intervenes and soon finds that his Stewie-assisted gift of gab has an unexpected positive side: he finds himself popular and nominated for class president. Stewie feels that his work is done after this, so Chris kidnaps him to keep him handy, keeping him in his backpack. One day Chris leaves him in the restroom; after freeing his legs, Stewie tries and fails to run blind. At the debate, Stewie points out that Chris has become the bully himself, and he realizes the truth. He steps on the stage to announce he is dropping out of the race and asks Stewie's forgiveness. At home, Stewie congratulates Chris for his guts and mentions that two of the bullies who picked on Chris committed suicide over Chris' rebuttals.

Meanwhile, Peter takes umbrage at Stella taking extra breaks to smoke at work and decides to take up smoking. He soon begins smoking every chance he gets to stop whatever task he is doing. When Peter's smoking begins to affect his sex life with Lois, she makes him stop but he's unable to break the habit and starts sneaking smokes during any little task, becoming fidgety and irritated when unable to get away. The smoking has an effect on his appearance and Lois takes him to the doctor. At the hospital, Dr. Hartman refuses to help with Peter's condition and bribes Peter and Lois to leave. At a stop-smoking clinic, a man named Mr. Stone wants Peter to be the face of their anti-smoking campaign but Peter must continue smoking to maintain his poor health. Peter appears in advertisements and finds himself a celebrity, but his health continues to suffer to Lois' irritation. After Mr. Stone discovers that Peter is unremarkable after a NASCAR event, he releases him, to Peter's sorrow. Back at home, Peter announces that he's ready to go back to normal, but Lois states that everything he has done is irreversible. Peter calls for a do-over of the ending with just a shot of the house and music, but it backfires.

Reception

Eric Thurm of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, saying "Phew. “Secondhand Spoke” is just a solid, middle-of-the-road episode of Family Guy, and after the last couple of weeks, that’s all I really wanted. Everything in this episode is pretty straightforward, within the bounds of the characters (for the most part), and doesn’t use horrible sources of humor. Exhale (with smoke). The good qualities of this episode are immediately apparent, when, after a brief scene of Chris getting bullied to set up the B-story, we jump right into the main plot: Peter getting addicted to cigarettes. Starting the main story without a few minutes of unrelated material is rare for this show, and it calls attention to how tightly plotted this episode is for a half-hour of Family Guy."^[2]

The episode received a 2.1 rating in the 18-49 years old demographic and was watched by a total of 4.17 million people. This made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night, beating American Dad!, Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons.^[3]

References